3-D Is Coming to This Theater!

Lecture by Stefan Drössler, director of the Munich Filmmuseum.

Stefan Drössler, director of the Munich Filmmuseum, is one of the world’s leading authorities on the history of 3-D. In this richly illustrated lecture, he traces the technology back to stereophotography, the magic lantern, and the origins of cinema, with fascinating examples from Lumière, Skladanowsky, and Méliès, and brings it up to the digital cinema of today. Different approaches in various countries such as Germany, France, the U.S., the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, South Korea and Hong Kong are shown in 3-D clips, along with excerpts from little-known paper print films from 1900, the first 3-D sound films from the 1930s, the first 3-D feature film from 1947, the Festival of Britain in 1951, the first Hollywood 3-D craze in the 1950s, the Russian wave in the 1960s and 1970s, and Asian experiments in the 1980s. Drössler also describes the technological challenges that have led to the development of modern digital 3-D cinema, and reflects on the artistic possibilities of stereoscopic film.